SHORTHAND, also stenography. A method of WRITING rapidly by substituting special characters, symbols, and ABBREVIATIONS for letters, words, or phrases, and used for recording the proceedings of legislatures and testimony in courts of law, dictation for business correspondence, and note-taking by journalists and others. Cicero's orations, Luther's sermons, and Shakespeare's plays were all preserved by means of shorthand; Samuel Pepys used it to keep his diary, Charles Dickens used it as a reporter in the London law courts and Parliament, and Bernard Shaw wrote his plays in it. There are two basic systems of shorthand: orthographic, based on standard letters, and phonetic, seeking to represent speech sounds directly. Also involved are the use of arbitrary symbols and abbreviations to facilitate speed, comparable to the use of & for and and etc. for etcetera in longhand.

In 1837, in England, Isaac PITMAN launched his phonetic system, Stenographic Sound-Hand, which classified sounds in a scientific manner and introduced abbreviations for the sake of speed. Made up of 25 single consonants, 24 double consonants, and 16 vowel sounds, its principles include the use of the shortest signs for the shortest sounds, single strokes for single consonants, simple geometrical forms, and pairing consonants (one written more lightly, as for f, the other more heavily, as for v). Revised versions of this system are widely used throughout the English-speaking world and are predominant in Australia, New Zealand, and India. In 1888, John Robert Gregg published his Light-Line Phonography, a system that he took to the US, where it became the dominant medium, although Pitman's Shorthand is widely used there and is predominant in Canada. Gregg Shorthand is also phonetic, but the characters are based on elements of ordinary longhand, vowels are shown by circles and hooks, and curving motions are used throughout to ease movement. It also employs abbreviations, blended consonants, and affix forms to enable the writer to gain speed. Systems developed in the 20c use longhand symbols for most or all letters, and include: Baine's Typed Shorthand (1917), Speedwriting (1923, 1951), HySpeed Longhand (1932), Abbreviatrix (1945), Quickhand (1953), Stenoscript (1955), and Carter Briefhand (1957). The advantages of orthographic systems are relative ease of learning and transcription, the disadvantage loss of speed; the advantages of phonetic systems are speed and ease of transcription, the disadvantage difficulty of learning.

short·hand / ˈshôrtˌhand/ • n. a method of rapid writing by means of abbreviations and symbols, used esp. for taking dictation.The major systems of shorthand are those devised in 1837 by Sir Isaac Pitman and in 1888 by John R. Gregg (1867–1948). ∎  [in sing.] a short and simple way of expressing or referring to something: poetry for him is simply a shorthand for literature that has aesthetic value.

shorthand System of writing, used to record speech quickly. Phonetic shorthand systems first appeared during the 18th century, and the most famous system, Pitman's shorthand, was published in 1837. All the sounds of the English language are represented by 49 signs for consonants and 16 signs to indicate vowels. The Gregg system of phonetic shorthand, widely taught in the USA, has a script based on ordinary writing.